


So it Starts

by Malitia



Category: Original Work
Genre: Conspiracy, Gen, Monsters, Would be monster hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28087317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malitia/pseuds/Malitia
Summary: Okay... I'm working on a homebrew TRPG kinda sorta based on the Shin Megami Tensei franchise. This would be the flavor fiction for it. I might need to bug someone into rewriting it because as I routinely tell you: I CAN'T WRITE.It's not tagged for the SMT games because it doesn't really contains anything recognizably belonging to the games. (Those might happen in the game explanation/example sections.)So: Original Fiction!
Comments: 12
Kudos: 1





	1. The Offer

Jeanine sat at the bar “Okay this has to be your weirdest pick-up attempt ever, but let me get it straight.” she looked at the two guys beside her “You say you broke into the abandoned furniture factory...”

“Urban explored the abandoned furniture factory.” injected the darker haired one, who was called Dave and she knew him since 10th grade.

“...so you broke in, which is a crime by the way I could arrest you for it, to make videos for the web...”

“Hey! It would get hundreds of views on youtube!” he protested, his pal Alan was oddly silent.

“Now you want to go back, and want me to accompany you, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“High school friendship or not, asking a cop to break the law is already phenomenally stupid, but why do you even need me, exactly?” she asked.

“Because you have a gun.” Alan spoke for the first time.

“And…?”

“THERE ARE MONSTERS IN THERE!!” he shouted almost hysterically “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!!”

The startled bar patrons starred in their direction.

“You know… you guys need professional help, but not mine...” she started to get up and back off, but Dave held up his phone and on it, in glorious HD, played a video of something… something or more like several things that might look human from a distance but on the video their canine like features were clearly visible. She sat back “Okay… that’s new. What are those?”

“Ghouls, or weredogs, or cu sith... according to Alan anyway.” he gestured towards his friend “He isn’t exactly that coherent right now. But you can see why we can’t go to the authorities.”

She stared at the screen for a second “I’m in… but if this is some kind of practical joke I’ll personally murder you.”


	2. The Search

“I’m more and more convinced that you’re pulling my leg.” Jeanine complained to hide her nervousness as they waded through the severalth building with a foreboding atmosphere, but empty of everything outside of debris.

“We d-don’t.” stuttered Alan, which was vastly preferable to the shouting.

Dave looked around concerned and finally asked “Where is the graffiti?”

He was right. There was no graffiti or rags or crumpled newspaper or thrown away beer cans or used condoms or anything to show any human presence since the compound was shut down. Apparently not even homeless people, or rebellious teenagers, or anybody ever ventured this deep. Well, except them. But why?

Then she noticed the blood. She bowed down to examine it. There was not much of it, just some drops, but there was no mistaking it, it was blood alright and fresh.

“Did any of you injure yourself?” She asked.

“I d-don’t think so.” answered Alan.

Dave shook his head “No. We just run. Why are you...”

She pointed at the drops.

“Is that…?” he asked, and she nodded. “D-did those things hurt someone?” Alan’s voice trembled showing the hysteria creeping back in.

She swallowed… She couldn’t answer as that was certainly an option too, but if that was the case, they might be already late…

They followed the trail deep into the complex. It got more and more pronounced with every step they took and Alan… scratch that, all of them grew more and more panicked.

They finally arrived at the door to one of the structures farthest away from town. It was some kind of administrative building from the looks of it, but what was it doing so out in the middle of nowhere? Jeanine wondered. But it had symbols in blood smeared all around it… there was no mistake… this had to be the plac… her though was suddenly disrupted by Alan’s muttering.

“Ye’ thou who art above hear our pl… pr… I-it’s t-too smudged to read!” 

“What did you say?”

“W-well, that’s what it says.” he said, then looked around panicked “I didn’t do any of this!” he apparently actually could read from her stare so he took a deep breath “I’m an occultist as a hobby, I thought Dave told you.”

“He didn’t.” she said while sideways glancing at him and smirking “Hey, your stutter is gone.”

“Could any of you open the damn door? I feel like we’re just stalling.” said Dave behind them.

She took a deep breath and pushed the door open.


	3. The Reveal

The coppery smell of blood hit her like a sledgehammer. All the walls were smudged with it in the same symbols as the door, which Alan found fascinating. She was more concerned with the bodies littering the floor.

She felt relieved at first as they were clearly not human… mostly… maybe? Meaning some were sort of canine, some almost human, most somewhere in between and quite clearly the beings the guys filmed in the first place.

Someone or something got here before them. But was this a good thing (Yay! The monsters are gone!) or bad (The blood symbols didn’t bode well)?

“Oh good our job is done!” Dave proclaimed. Both her and Alan stared daggers at him.

“What?” he asked and Alan was about to start lecturing him, but she was distracted by some faint sound… it sounded like… an animal or something crying… she started to run in the general direction almost by instinct.

“HEY!” the dudes cried in unison as they darted after her.

She only had to push one more door open to arrive in an open central area of the building, that she half consciously dubbed the “cafeteria”, and reach the place of the drama.

A hooded figure was leaning over a squealing bundle of… something while an obviously wounded half-dog-humanoid sneered at it viciously.

Then things got both insanely fast and almost like slow motion…

“Goddess help me.” Jeaniene prayed as she went for her gun. She was taking aim at the hooded figure and shot. It staggered and fell leaving a streak of green blood in its wake as it slumped at the floor. The dog-like being stared at her for a second then caught the bundle in its snout and ran.

Then suddenly the hooded figure began to rise again slowly turning toward the group, she emptied her gun into it but it kept moving towards them at an ever faster pace. She started to reload, but the thing closed the distance between them surprisingly fast. Alan pulled a baseball bat from his backpack, she briefly wondered what that could do against the figure if several bullets didn’t stop it? He swung it at the figure, it connected, and she could swear strange symbols lit up on it. The thing howled. She finished reloading and shot several bullets into it again, while Alan hit it several times too. Then the figure collapsed for the last time and finally… finally… stopped moving.

“Why d-did we do that again?” asked Alan.

“Should we have let it murder that puppy… thing?” she asked back.

“Um. You do remember we came here to do exactly that? It was just doing the job for us.” Dave said who just entered the room visibly out of breath.

“It was a monster too. And child murder is not okay.”

“I… l-loath that you’re both kinda right.” Alan murmured. “Also it was a ghoul.”

“And you know that, how?” asked Dave while examining the dead creature and secretly pocketing its only possession, a smartphone. It didn’t need it anymore, he thought.

“I spelled up my bat against the…” explained Alan, then stopped mid sentence “G-guys?” he pointed at the walls where the blood symbols obviously started to pulsate. They looked at eachother and all started running back towards the entrance as fast as they could manage.


	4. The Solution… for now

None of them could exactly recall the next minutes later… they ran… the symbols were pulsating… then the walls shaking… then rumbling almost like some great beast’s roar… great cloud of dust that might be too dark for dust and moved in unnerving ways... as they could practically feel the building collapsing behind them… then finally light, and they were out. Not that that meant they stopped running, they didn’t until they put some blocks between themselves and the compound never daring to look back.  
Epilogue - Some days later

They were sitting at the bar again. Finally Alan broke the awkward silence:

“H-have any of you heard something about THAT? I-I mean, all the news stories talked about an accident, or natural causes… maybe one blaming a gas leak?”

Jeanine shook her head “No official reports as far I could determine. I mean, without getting myself fired.” she stared into her drink “There was a special unit sent out to check for anything suspicious… but there is no paper trail of it. And can’t even find out who was on it unofficially. It smells like a cover-up.”

“B-but that would...” Alan stopped himself. They all knew what he meant, this suggested they stumbled upon something much bigger than themselves, a conspiracy even.

Dave sat uncomfortably and became paler and paler with every second. He came here with the intention to tell them about his find, he really wanted to come clean… he knew how they would react: They would berate him about taking the phone let alone keeping it. Even if he wasn’t an idiot and took the battery and the SIM out of it.

This was the moment of truth…

Something in his bag beeped.

“Don’t you want to check that?” Jeanine asked.

He froze, and shook his head. He knew what it was… the same thing that happened right after he got home after their adventure.

And several times since.

And now he knew he couldn’t tell them. He knew, if he would pull out the phone now it would have a string of unknown characters on its screen, that started to change almost as if someone was trying to find the right translation for them… then stop, and the message would read:

WE SEE YOU


End file.
